“I was that close,” Vivek Dalela says, to opening a home health care business–with an eye to reforming American health care, at least in his small corner of the universe. Since a lot of home health care involves feeding people with special dietary needs, his employees would be “the best people, educated about eating the best food.” But around the same time, his friend Swaroop Bhojani put his vegan restaurant Back2Roots on the market–and Dalela realized that if you take a broad definition of health, a restaurant can also be a health care business.

He bought Back2Roots and reopened in June as First Bite. Dalela, a business professor at Grand Valley in Grand Rapids, has never owned a restaurant or any kind of business, so he is going slowly, starting with a limited menu for lunch only. (Dalela and his wife, EMU business prof Shiri Vivek, live in Ann Arbor.)

Dalela says it’s probably citizens who end up reforming American health care, since at the top “the health system is so messed up, I cannot believe we are living in the USA. It is way worse than India,” his home country.

He waits a minute for that to sink in, knowing that Americans tend to envision the India of Slumdog Millionaire, where people die in squalor on the streets of Mumbai and Kolkata. “Yes,” he acknowledges, “but those people who die on the streets have access to a doctor the same day, and for an affordable price. Here I am, paying $20,000 a year for health insurance for my family, and I still have a $5,000 deductible. It’s forcing us to take health into our own hands.”

Back2Roots closed last summer when Bhojani’s business partner Pradeep Chowdhry–also a friend of Dalela’s–died. Bhojani is involved with First Bite as a consultant, but unlike Back2Roots, First Bite is not vegan or even entirely vegetarian.

“We want to take the philosophy of good, clean eating as mainstream as possible, not keep it a niche,” Dalela says. Allowing in some meat (so far, only chicken but eventually, some fish) allows him to cast a wider customer net.

First Bite’s menu at press time was a short one of made-from-scratch sandwiches, wraps, bowls, salads, and soups, each category promising “more coming soon.” For dessert, First Bite is serving kulfi–Indian ice cream. Much denser than American ice cream, it melts more slowly. Bhojani is making it especially for First Bite from what Dalela says is a thousand-year-old, labor-intensive recipe in four flavors: chocolate, strawberry, mango, and the most iconically Indian flavor, cardamom.

First Bite, 108 S. Main, 369-4765. Initial hours: Mon.-Sat. 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Closed Sun. firstbitefoods.com.